They are real: The Bitcoin Foundation Opens Up Avalons First ASIC #bitcoin

They are real: The Bitcoin Foundation Opens Up Avalon’s First ASIC Charlie Shrem Feb 01 2013 As most of the world awoke to see Bitcoin priced over $20, a new 18-month high, a few of us were fortunate enough to see another miracle this morning – the world’s first ASIC Bitcoin mining machine alive and kicking. Since the beginning of Bitcoin mining, it’s been understood that the hardware would specialize to the point of dedicated process-specific chips, known as “ASICs” (application specific integrated circuits). However, until today, it was all hope and speculation. And for a year now, the community has been abuzz with rumors and a fierce competition by several companies to be the first to market with the holy grail of hashing. And to be sure, ASICs are not just a marginal improvement in technology – they represent a mining efficiency upgrade of roughly 50x. Big money, for a...